Rishi Sunak’s political journey over the past few years was summed up by him well in a joke he made responding to the King’s speech earlier this month: ‘On the government benches, life comes at you fast…before you know it, you have a bright future behind you, and you are left wondering if you can credibly be an elder statesman at the age of 44’. It was a good gag – witty, self-deprecating and with a kernel of truth in its reference to his meteoric rise and equally stratospheric fall. As someone who was at school with Sunak in the Nineties, it brought back memories of the Rishi I knew – rather than the slightly uncomfortable politician he became as prime minister.
Teenage Rishi Sunak was considerably better than that
The first time I ever met Rishi, I was introduced to him through our mutual friend James Forsyth, erstwhile political editor of this title.
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